Are Beckett and Joyce the new X Factor?

At the end of April, with the final televised debate complete and Cleggmania already on the wane, Nick Clegg wrote a blog for the Guardian in which he waxed lyrical about his love for his "hero" Samuel Beckett.

The Lib Dem leader explained passionately that he has read Waiting for Godot "over a hundred times" and revels in the writer's "sparse, unembellished prose". He concluded that "it is impossible to grow tired of Beckett".

While this provoked a certain amount of chatter in the campaign gossip columns and on theatre blogs, it was by no means a game-changing election story. Given that Beckett is a notoriously nihilistic and impenetrable writer (Clegg admits that he finds his style "direct and disturbing"), the contrast between the revelation and the usual pandering-to-the-people tone of politicians' cultural preferences is undeniable.

Election interviews are full of the inanities that politicians feel they have to peddle in order to hoodwink the electorate into believing they don't have intellectual, "highbrow" tastes -- David Cameron's professions of love for the Smiths and Bennie Hill and Gordon Brown claiming to watch The X Factor regularly are notable examples.

But here is the leader of a British political party admitting to hero worship for a very "highbrow", difficult author with whom most of the electorate will not be very familiar. Are the politicians slowly escaping the clutches of their PR machines?

Beyond the small world of the UK blogosphere, others were paying more attention to Clegg's unusual declaration. It was pretty comprehensively covered by the main US political bloggers, including the Daily Dish and Politico, and they were unanimous in their view that this affection for Beckett on Clegg's part was political cyanide, or, as Michael Tomasky put it:

You British folks understand, don't you, that if an American presidential candidate said his hero was Samuel Beckett, he'd be finished. I mean totally finished. He couldn't even get away with an American equivalent. It'd be one thing for a US pol to say Mark Twain. That's about the only serious writer in history a pol could name and survive.

And yet, despite astonishment from across the pond, Clegg's personal profile was not noticeably marred by his admission. Perhaps it will stand as a valuable example now that a similar preference has leaked out about one of their own -- the vice-president has just been caught in an act of affection for James Joyce.

Joe Biden's annual financial disclosure report has just been released, and although it showed that he had accepted notably few gifts, one does stand out. He received a first-edition copy of a chapter from Finnegans Wake, signed by the author, James Joyce, and valued at $3,500.

Now, Joyce is just as obtuse and highbrow an author as Beckett, and it will be interesting to see whether Biden receives any adverse coverage for valuing such a work so highly. Or perhaps, as demonstrated by the limited impact of Clegg's admission, we have moved a little further into a new kind of relationship with our politicians.

Admittedly, it is a very small step, but it could be that we are starting to trust them to speak of their true personal preferences and to accept what is revealed.